Dead Man

Dead Man is a 1995 film directed by Jim Jarmusch. It has been described as a "psychedelic western." It's main character, William Blake, travels from the industrialized civilized north east to the untamed and lawless west. William is young, like the United States, and he has a lot to learn about his country. The first scene William is riding a train across the country, and the passengers progressively grow more savage looking. He is slowly becoming more and more out of his element. A fireman sits across from him and asks where he is going. William tells him his destination is the town of Machine for a job as an accountant, because he has nothing left back home. The fireman seems worried. When he arrives at his destination he finds that his position has already been taken, and his would-be employer, Dickenson, greets him at gunpoint. William goes to the local bar and buys a bottle of liquor. While outside he meets a beautiful woman who he goes home with. She shows him her gun, paper flowers, and then they get into bed. The woman's ex-boyfriend bursts in, and after the couple argues a bit he pulls out a gun and attempts to shoot William Blake. She shields him and takes the bullet, but it still passed through and injures William. William grabs her gun and after missing a couple times, finally kills the ex-boyfriend. He then escapes through the window, steals a horse, and rides into the wilderness. Dickenson happens to be the father of this ex-boyfriend and the horse William stole was Dickenson's. So he hires 3 outlaws who have reputations of cold-blooded killers to hunt down William Blake and return the horse. William passes out and wakes up to an American Indian tending his wounds, but the bullet is too close to his heart so he calls William a walking dead man. They travel together and the Indian tells William his name is Nobody, and that he is exiled from his tribe. This is because as a child Nobody was taken by white men to Europe as a show attraction and eventually educated. He escaped and came back to America, but during his education he learned of the poet William Blake. So when our William tells Nobody his name, he mistakes him as the spirit or reincarnation of the poet. Although William does not know who this poet is, Nobody calls him a dead man and continues to make references to the poet and his poetry throughout the film. Through their travels through the wilderness, William kills two US Marshalls, and a man who attempts to turn him in. He also joins Nobody on a vision quest. At the end of their travels William is a changed man. He is wounded and Nobody sets him on a boat and sends him off into the water. This is Nobody's way of sending him back into the afterlife. The whole time he was telling William that he was taking him home, and this is what he meant. So as William Blake lay dying on the boat, he watches one of the outlaws kill Nobody, and Nobody kills him.

This is my favorite film. It was like that the first time I watched it though, for many reasons. The depth to all the characters and the fact that such a simple plot could hold so many themes and explain so much
about life blows me away. At the beginning of the film, the fireman is speaking about coming over to America from a boat and he says to William that the water in his head matched the water outside the boat, and that "the landscape is moving, but the boat is still." This was a metaphor for the changes that William would experience in his journey. The setting changed, and although William appeared to change as the story progressed, he was essentially the same person. Just presented with new experiences that he had never had to react to before. He lost a lot of his innocence, and found out a lot about himself. When he came to Machine he was shot, and his Eastern self died. His western self came to surface and when he realized who he was he could die. His journey through the wilderness was representative of life, and since you're essentially alone, who's a better guide than Nobody?

Besides the depth of the plot, the cinematography and music were amazing. Neil Young improvised the entire soundtrack on his guitar, which is pretty unique. The entire film was black and white, which added to the western vibe. The scarcity of main characters allows you to really get to know William Blake and Nobody.